Inclusive, from the start
Another major goal was to ensure that low-vision, screenreader and keyboard-only users could navigate the site with ease. While starting from a clean codebase, we were able to make many impactful improvements to color contrast, semantic HTML and keyboard accessibility with little additional effort. Additionally, we were able to work in some new features for a more accessible experience. We added a skip link before the navigation so that users could bypass the menu if desired. For a better screenreader experience, we added an aria-live region and helper functions to announce form errors and route changes. In addition, interactions are keyboard accessible with noticeable focus states. We also strived to use clear, descriptive alt text.
Looking Forward
There are always more wins to be had for better performance, maintainability and accessibility. We are refining our site telemetry to better understand where the bottlenecks lie and where we can make the most impact. We’re proud of the progress we have made; progress that will surely serve us well as we look to create a more pleasant experience for our customers around the world.

In August, we released a major redesign of slack.com, and we want to give you a peek behind-the-scenes. Rebuilding our marketing website was a massive project that took careful coordination across a variety of teams, departments, and agencies.

At first we tried to implement our layout with a traditional 12-column grid using CSS Grid. That approach ultimately didn’t work because we were limiting ourselves into a using a single dimensional layout when Grid is meant for two. In the end, we discovered that a column-based grid wasn’t actually needed. Since Grid allows you to create a custom grid to match whatever layout you have, we didn’t need to force it into 12 columns. Instead, we created CSS Grid objects for some of the common layout patterns in the designs.